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Welcome to the my blog. My name is Lucy Farfort i'm a freelance illustrator & designer maker. This is where you can find out what i've been up to of late, read my attempts at a decent post & the rantings of a visual addict. Hope you like it. You can contact me to say 'hi' by email on lucy@lucyshappyplace.comIf you would like to take a look at my work (& i would very much like you to) please visit my site: lucyshappyplace.com

Saturday, 26 October 2013

Guess what? Today you can breathe a sigh of relief as you'll be pleased
to know this is the penultimate wedding series blog post. Alright,
alright - don't get too excited ;)

Holy Moly's lively dance folk
stylings got everyone nicely warmed up and ready for our headline act
Hannabiell & Midnight Blue.
Personally I would say that the name of this band suggests a sort of
smooth, chilled, sort of jazz outfit, fronted by a female vocalist with a
sultry voice. However they are nothing like that and are in fact an
energetic, all out afro-beat, tribal funk, band fronted by a sassy no-
mess Bostonian out to get the crowd moving. Essentially - they're
flipping awesome!

(Photo by Alan Chun from the Hannabiell.com website)

I first discovered this band at a
friend's African celebration event two or three years ago. At that event
the band's two leading ladies took centre stage, Yilis on the drums and
Hannabiell shifting between drums and a massive bass trombone. Just the
two of them alone made some serious noise and were mightily impressive.
I kind of forgot about them but at some point when organising the acts
their name arose, and after watching some gig footage of them and their band I quickly got in contact. Luckily for us the band was
available, because they're pretty busy (unsurprisingly given how fab
they are). I found out from one of our guests a few weeks after later,
that our little festival was their third gig of the day - wow!

I'm
not quite sure the crowd knew what to make of them when they first came
on, as Hannabiell's first port of call was to insist that everyone came
closer to the front of the stage. Her bubbly Bostonian tones finally
coaxed everyone to the front.
First the drums kicked in
- these ladies' drumming skills are awe inspiring to watch. Then the
brass from their band mates started and not long after that the trombone
came, followed shortly with a rave whistle to set off the tribal
drumming. By the end of the first song practically everyone was dancing.
I can't remember the last time I danced that energetically, especially in wellies:

Getting
down with tribal sounds, Dave took the opportunity to whip of his tie
and use it as a head band. This combined with his rave inspired
waistcoat and some purple fairy wings, he looked like he'd just stepped
off a carnival float.

It was ace seeing everyone up dancing and having such a great time.Then
came the icing on the already very tasty cake: after their last song,
Hannabiel announced that she needed volunteers from the audience to help
the band out. Off course she had LOTS of takers including Dave. Each
volunteer was given some kind of percussion instrument and one by one
after Yilis and Hannabiell introduced a beat, each was instructed to
join in with their contribution. Seeing everyone taking part on stage and the audience's surprise was
just fantastic. Even thinking about this now brings a massive smile to
my face. Here's Dave up on stage, concentrating hard to stay in time -

All of our guests absolutely loved them
and for the rest of the night people kept asking me where I'd found them
and how I knew about them.Its impossible to get an idea of what
this band sound like from my description and the photos alone so I was
over the moon to learn that one of the guests captured some of their set
on film and here it is:

Friday, 18 October 2013

For me the end of the first dance marked the beginning of the proper festival. All the traditional stuff was over so Dave and I could finally relax and enjoy the moment without having the worry of any more awkward bits to come.
So it was time to let our hair down and DANCE!!
After Holy Moly's rendition of the Bright Eyes classic it was time to crack on with some stomping folk music.

Of course much barn dance type 'swing your partner round and round' action ensued.
It really felt like a festival, with some folks like myself dancing up front, some watching from the back and others lazing about on the grass with a pint of specially brought in Nel's Best ale.

When we were in the process of planning it all, although we obviously wanted the reception to have a real festival atmosphere, I don't think we realised just how close it would feel to the real thing. Our very own mini Glastonbury!
There was no doubt that our first band went down a storm, but then it was time for our headliner act who really got things moving....

There will be more on that next week, but in the meantime as promised I managed to get the first dance video uploaded and as embarrassing as it is i'm still going to share it with you. Its bad! Don't say i didn't warn you:

Friday, 4 October 2013

Happy Friday! I'm a bit late with the post today but at least i got there eventually.
Before i get into this post, i just have to say a big thanks to Narc magazine for recommending our first band of the evening.
Organising the bands was undoubtedly one of the most difficult parts of planning the wedding. With a very tight budget and family and friends who all have greatly
different tastes in music, getting this right was going to be no mean
feat.
I think its fair to say that Dave, my better 1/2, pretty much only likes dance music - ala techno and
drum and bass. Now as much as I love a good bit of D&B, it doesn't really have that early evening festival vibe... does it? Given that dance music (at this point of the day at least) was off the menu, the band
hunt was essentially down to me. After months of hunting and with the clock counting down, I contacted 'Narc' a well-respected local music mag, for help. They suggested 3 bands and after listening to each, one really stood out; 'Holy, Moly and the Crackers', a dancey folk outfit, who we know would
appeal to lots of tastes and get the crowd going. Finally! We'd identified out first main stage act.

I was really excited about the bands, but I wasn't at all looking forward
to the first dance, which we planned for the very start of the 1st
act's set.
Looking back now, the sensible thing would have been to
just say ' we're not having a first dance at our wedding'. However at
this point during the planning, tradition reared its meddling head and
said in a very hypnotic voice which
seemingly I couldn't resist 'YOU MUST HAVE A FIRST DANCE'. Like a fool I said: 'Yes, we
must have a first dance, and I have a brilliant idea! Given that we both
have absolutely no clue how to slow dance, lets choose the slowest song we can find to dance to'.
Whoops, bad plan.
The intention was for us to practice,
but as usual lack of time, coupled with the embarrassment of attempting
to slow dance in the lounge when you're totally clueless, equated to
virtually no practice.
Anyway when the 'time' arrived there was no
escape, particularly as the band learnt their own rendition of the song
especially for the occasion. The song was 'First Day of My Life' by Bright Eyes and although not the best choice for people who
can't slow dance I still love it and the lyrics are very appropriate.
Now despite the embarrassment I was going to put a video on here of 'the crappest first dance in the world' as caught on video by one of our guests, but lucky for me and probably you i can't work out how to do it so will have to make do with some pics.

The good thing about the photos is you can't witness the crap-ness to it's full effect.
The 'lift' was Dave's spontaneous attempt to fill time, which to a point did work quite well . Then as time goes on and it becomes increasingly
painful we just call on guests to join in an ultimately save u. I promise i will get the vid up when i can work out how to do it.